


Odds and Ends

by lizzledpink



Series: Telepathy 101 for Beginners [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Genocide, M/M, Tarsus IV, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 22:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzledpink/pseuds/lizzledpink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody escapes a tragedy unscathed. Not even Spock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odds and Ends

The odds were approximately twenty-two thousand, six hundred and thirty four to one.

Jim Kirk chatted amiably with Doctor McCoy, who growled and surprised Jim with a hypo. Jim complained. It was an ordinary series of events, rife with predictable familiarity. Any time one managed to find themselves near the happy reunion of one CMO with his (conscious) Captain, one would inevitably find oneself presented with this display. It was a comfort to the two men. It signified a return to comfortable times and places. It meant that even if the Captain was not okay now, he would be soon, for he was in good care.

The moment slipped out of grasp like ice, and left behind a chill.

“How’s Spock?” Jim asked, inevitably. They had been on the planet together for those long, brutal two weeks. Jim was, of course, concerned for his First Officer’s state of being.

“I don’t know,” admitted Leonard. “He’s not admitting to anything, but I think there’s some psychological damage there. I was hoping you would help me get a read on him. Honestly, I’m surprised _you’re_ not more...”

“Affected?” Jim asked. His tone of voice feigned lightness. “Me?”

“Jim.”

“Bones.” Jim sighed when his mock sternness was met with silence. “Look, I – I won’t lie and say I’m feeling all sunshine and daisies right now. No, I’m not fine. But I will be.”  Quieter, Jim added, “This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this sort of trauma, Bones.”

“If you’re lying to me, or if you need anything, you know where my office is, and you know I won’t hesitate to kick your ass.”

“I know. So, when Spock’s awake, you want me to try and, I don’t know, feel it out?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Hell, no,” Jim replied. “It – he wasn’t okay, Bones. It was bad.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Time drifted.

On Cetus II, the genocide continued. It was Day 14.

Spock’s lack of usual grace denoted a desperate need to meditate, but there was nothing for it – the cracks of guns were sporadic and striking every time. Gunpowder propelled bullets. Archaic, cold – they ripped through flesh and left shrapnel spidering behind.

No mind could find peace. A crack was heard every few minutes, too random to be a pattern, the meanings too harsh to even imagine a semblance of peace, not even in that which usually brought solace.

Jim’s eyes were hard, and his smiles tightened at the corners when they made their now-rare appearances. A man of such dynamic ability reduced to a creature of survival, an open-book of emotions now sheared away by murder, hopelessness, and secrets.

Jim went to tap Spock’s shoulder, but Spock flinched away. Jim might have normally looked hurt, but all he allowed to show was thinned lips. Spock’s face fell in guilt and apology, and he swallowed in fear.

Remarkable, how under the threat of so much death, these roles were reversed.

There was a knock on the attic’s trapdoor.

Jim opened it. He sweet-talked the man with the gun. It failed. Spock was shot. Jim yelled. Jim was shot. Their eyes met, and they knew it was over, and the Tusian’s genocide had finally claimed their lives. The set of Jim’s jaw spoke of inevitability, succumbing to fate. He wasn’t afraid. Spock was, and he didn’t have the mental fortitude to hide it.

Spock opened his eyes.

Time drifted some more.

The odds had been approximately twenty-two thousand, six hundred and thirty four to one.

“Are you awake?” asked Jim.

“Yes,” replied Spock. He turned his head. Jim had a small, relieved smile on his face. The lines of his body were slightly tense, and his arms were crossed. Subconscious remnants of defense, Spock thought.

“Could I... Spock, could I touch you? It’s – it’s for my own comfort. I’m still not sure my eyes believe you’re alive. But if it’s going to put any kind of strain on you, I’ll manage.”

Spock shook his head just slightly. “It has been quiet. I am not yet at one hundred percent, but my mental recovery is sufficient.”

Jim nodded, and carefully placed a hand on Spock – not on his shoulder, as Spock had perhaps anticipated based on his last attempt at contact, but on the edge of the back of Spock’s hand and the start of his wrist. Not quite an intimate touch, but not wholly removed from intimacy, either.

Spock felt his something in him unlock. He recognized a faint sense of Jim’s emotions. They were soothing and not-soothing at once. The light mental strain after so much stress was unwelcome, but the sense of Jim’s emotions, a calm bubbling of affection, contained worry, and growing but quiet relief, was more relaxing than expected. There was nothing harsh about them. After a moment, it became obvious that the relative softness of the emotions was quite deliberate – occasionally another emotion would attempt to surface, or one of them would spike slightly in intensity, but Jim kept himself calm.

“Is this okay?” Jim asked.

“You are suppressing the full breadth of your emotions,” Spock replied.

“Yeah. Figured it might help my chances of being able to touch you if I did. Was I right?”

Spock blinked, considering. “I suppose the mental contact, in this state, might become uncomfortable in an hour.”

Jim smiled, and a matching, small burst of happiness joined it. “That’s easily long enough. You sound surprised that I’m so – oh, I don’t know. In control?”

“I might have been, but not after what happened,” Spock replied. Jim looked away, wincing slightly, with a quickly-muted matching spike of unpleasant emotions. “May I ask you something?” Spock requested.

“Fire away.”

“Have you been in a situation like that before?”

Jim smiled, but there was no humor in it, no amusement trickling through his thoughts. “Picked up on that, huh. Yeah.”

Spock closed his eyes, thoughtful. After a moment, Jim made as if to remove his hand, but Spock murmured, “Don’t.” Jim left his hand over Spock’s wrist. Spock twisted his hand lightly in Jim’s weak grip, and grasped Jim’s wrist in return. Loose, but certain.

Jim’s positive emotional response almost slipped out of control, for a moment, but it settled down into the same general worry-relief-contentment before long. Spock turned the sensations over in his head, considering them, interpreting them to the best of his ability.

“I was really worried about you down there, you know,” Jim began after a time. “You seemed wild. Slightly feral. I knew you needed rest and you weren’t getting it. I knew you needed to escape telepathic contact, and even though I wanted to, I don’t know, comfort you or something, I knew I couldn’t. Damn touchy-feely culture just made it worse every time. You were emotional and falling apart down there, and I was helpless.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed,” Spock replied, his voice low. He kept his eyes closed. He didn’t need them open to know that Jim was still there, anchored to him though his wrist. “You were closed off entirely. It was strange. I found myself calmed that you were in control and thinking rationally, yet to see you so unlike yourself was a burden.”

“I don’t like doing that. I don’t like what it does to me. I like emotions, They’re wild and tell me that I’m truly alive. When I’m free to express them, that’s how I know everything is okay, because when things aren’t okay, there’s no time for emotions. There’s only time to complete the next task. Find a hiding place. Retrieve food. Bandage a wound. Emotions are freedom. Having to control them, similar to how you do it – that’s hell. For me. Not you, of course.”

Spock considered this, yet again evaluating Jim through this information. “Fascinating,” he found himself saying. He was rewarded with a genuine chuckle from Jim, and kind amusement.

“Maybe. Anyway, I was getting to a point. Bones is tearing his hair out because you won’t share your mental state with him. He suspects you’re not exactly okay. I _know_ you aren’t. I won’t push, Spock, but you already know I’ve been through this, and I already know you’re not okay. It’s only logical that you tell somebody about what’s going on with you for the sake of your own well-being, and because I’m the most equipped to deal with it and understand, it’s also logical to tell me. It’s also illogical to deny what I already know, so there’s no sense in pretending you’re entirely fine. Tell me. I’ll tell Bones something, but I won’t share details. Think about it. Just tell me what’s going on.”

Spock did, and came to Jim’s conclusion. He opened his eyes again, remaining very calm, distracting himself by following the soft waves of Jim’s emotions. Even controlled, they fluctuated slightly. Jim could not attain the solid control inherent in Vulcans. His emotions bubbled within a slight range, shifting and moving even as the surface remained still.

Somewhere within them, Spock found he could speak.

“The odds were approximately twenty-two thousand, six hundred and thirty four to one that we survived,” said Spock. “We witnessed so much death. There was so much blood that we could not smell it any longer. We saw Yo’alch, Mi’av and Ta’amwo die right in front of us. We – we should not have lived, Jim. I don’t understand how we are alive when by all rights we should be dead.”

Jim accepted the words in understanding. “Twenty-two thousand, huh?” he asked. “Damn. Sounds a bit like survivor’s guilt, Spock.”

Spock considered the term, and his own state. “Perhaps,” he allowed.

“Want to do a bit of calculating, Spock?” Jim asked. The question was random. As though reading his mind, Jim added, “Just trust me. You’ll understand by the time I’m done.”

“Very well.”

“Alright. I want you to imagine something for me. Imagine a colony. Imagine the communications from this colony are cut off. Imagine a person on that colony. When the food goes bad, and there’s no way to avoid it, the colony’s leader draws up a list, and that person is on it. He’s one of thousands of people the leader has decided will die so that the others live. This person runs out of the city to try and live in the forest and hide from the law enforcers who will try to kill him. He brings some others with him. He has to survive for about three months before help will finally come. How are his odds so far?”

Spock doesn’t quite understand the carefully checked anxiety Jim is experiencing. “Twenty thousand to one. I could narrow it down further with more parameters,” he replies.

“Twenty?” Jim took a deep breath. “I see. Now, one more parameter for you, Spock. Imagine that this person is fourteen years old.”

“Thirty-four thousand,” said Spock, but his mind didn’t quite connect the dots until he had already said it. He stared at Jim, whose emotions, though still under control, were bubbling more. He was both upset and resigned to it. He was guilty. He was horrified. But they were familiar feelings, and ones Spock suspected Jim might be allowing himself to feel, just a little.

“Tarsus IV,” Spock replied eventually.

Jim smiled without mirth. “Not bad, Mr. Spock. I think you see perfectly well how I might be familiar with the concept of survivor’s guilt.”

Spock thought this through some more. He again pondered the matter of Jim’s emotions, picking them apart, matching them to his own. His conclusions were – interesting. Unexpected. He had already cared for Jim, but this new understanding brought with it a number of new realities. Jim’s admission of guilt and experience of Tarsus was obviously a closely kept secret. That Jim put such trust in him...

Gradually, Spock allowed his grasp of the mental contact with Jim to weaken, and at the same time, he released Jim’s wrist only to slip his fingers down and lightly tangle them in Jim’s.

Jim’s surprise was the least controlled emotion yet, and his eyes widened abruptly. “That – isn’t this, uh, intimate? Vulcan-wise? Are those – are those _your_ feelings?”

Spock blinked at him expressionlessly, knowing he did not need smile for Jim to comprehend his slight amusement. “Yes.”

“Shit. Sorry, are my emotions too human right now? You kind of took me by surprise, there.”

“The strain came from your emotions coming up against my mental defenses, Jim. When the connection goes both ways, there is no such difficulty.”

Jim puzzled over that. Spock let him. He was surprisingly... unbothered. Trauma did not disappear in a single conversation, he knew, but right now, it was a mere shadow to the presence of his Captain, and the warm, lightly arousing feel of his hand and mind.

“Does this mean we’re Vulcan-dating now?” Jim asked eventually.

“I believe calling it dating is sufficient, assuming you’re amenable to the idea.”

Jim smiled slowly, and Spock could feel him unbounding his affection slightly, indulging it. Jim tangled his fingers more thoroughly in Spock’s, sharing a deep platonic love, and another, newer sort of love, still growing. “Very amenable. Just surprised.”

“I am as well,” Spock replied, honest. “It is extremely illogical.”

With unrestrained humor, Jim laughed loudly. It grabbed the attention of Doctor McCoy, and Jim dropped Spock’s hand, picking up somehow on Spock’s wish to keep things quiet, for now.

He let the familiarity of Jim’s banter with McCoy wash over him, and this time it didn’t slip away. He felt, to some extent, home. When Jim poked fun at Bones’ mother hen tendencies, he turned his head and slipped Spock a flirtatious wink.

Absolutely fascinating.

The odds that they survived the genocide on Cetus II were approximately twenty-nine thousand, six hundred and thirty four to one.

Therefore, Spock could only assume that in all things Jim managed to cheat the odds. Giving in to the fact that Jim’s very existence might never follow odds or logic... Well, it was the only logical thing to do.


End file.
